Retail prices edged up another 1.2 cents per litre Sunday morning to 129.4 cents per litre for regular unleaded gas across the Ottawa region Saturday, according to GasBuddy.com, a website that tracks energy prices across North America.

On average, prices were up a dramatic 27.5 per litre from a month ago, before Hurricane Harvey shuttered one-third of America’s oil refining capacity.

Prices surged Sunday in Kanata, where the average price at the pump jumped 8.5 cents per litre from Saturday to 131.9 cents per litre.

The increases at pumps in the region have been significantly faster than has been the case across Ontario, where retail prices averaged 127.7 cents per litre, up a comparatively modest 18.6 cents from a month earlier, pre-Hurricane Harvey.

Nor do we fare well compared to price hikes across the U.S. Consider that gas prices have jumped 27 per cent in Ottawa-Gatineau versus a month ago while the hikes have averaged about 12 per cent in the U.S. and 13 per cent in Canada as a whole. Prices for regular gas in nearby U.S. cities such as Buffalo are also up little more than 12 per cent compared to a month earlier.

There’s no real explanation for extra zip in the capital region’s gas prices, especially considering that pump prices in Ottawa-Gatineau have generally lagged those of Ontario for at least the past seven years.

And the tab is likely to continue to rise in coming days.

Economists at the TD Bank predict prices in Canada could reach a three-year high, which would mean Ottawa motorists could soon be paying more than 140 cents per litre.

The all-time high for the capital region, according to GasBuddy.com was 140.6 cents per litre, reached on Sept. 15, 2008.

That was days before the onset of the global economic crisis, which pushed prices all the way down to 67.5 cents per litre by yearend 2008.

We are unlikely to see anything approaching those kinds of plummeting prices this time around. Hurricane Harvey is natural disaster, which means prices will likely retreat to previous levels as soon as the refineries begin humming again.

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